> No, it would not. If you read the POSIX.1 specification for cp> carefully <http://www.unix.org/version3/online.html>, you will> notice that the process for copying a regular file is carefully> standardized. A POSIX.1-conforming cp implementation would not> be allowed to copy additional streams, unless either additional> options are given or the type of the file being copied is other> than S_IFREG. And cp is just one example of a standardized file> handling program.

We can safely ignore POSIX when it is too broken. cp could very wellbe modified to copy named streams except when the option --posix isspecified or the environment variale POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.